Two GOP senators may fight over Ag panel job

Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran is looking seriously at reclaiming the post of top Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee — setting up a challenge to Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts, who has been a thorn in the side of Southern producers because of his resistance to price supports.

Cochran, who outranks Roberts in years of seniority, has yet to commit himself publicly. “I’ve been looking at what the options are but I haven’t made any decisions,” he said initially when asked by POLITICO on Tuesday. But when told that Roberts had said flatly that he “intends” to remain the ranking Republican, the always-gentle Cochran bristled a bit.

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“Well, I guess we’ll have to vote on it,” he told POLITICO.

Indeed, Roberts shows no sign of backing down. “I intend to stay,” he said in a separate interview Tuesday. And if Cochran were to press his challenge, Republicans on the committee would have to first vote on the two men. And that result could be subject to a challenge in the full GOP conference.

The maneuvering now arises from Republican rules that term-limit how long an individual senator can serve in the top spot — either as ranking member or as chairman — on major committees.

Cochran has been so identified with the leadership of the Senate Appropriations Committee for so many years that the shift now comes as a shock to many. But Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) told POLITICO that he fully intends to claim the top Appropriations spot and would resist any waiver to extend Cochran’s term.

Agriculture would be a natural choice for Cochran to go to next, but for the fact that Roberts has firmly established himself as a major force in writing the five-year farm bill that passed the Senate in June.

Midwest corn and soybean producers stand to benefit the most from a proposed new shallow-loss subsidy structure in the Senate bill to replace the outdated system of direct cash payments to farmers. But Southern peanut, rice and wheat producers argue that they are left vulnerable by the failure to include even modest price supports to protect against falling markets.

The House Agriculture Committee in July approved its own five-year bill more sympathetic with Southern interests, but that measure was stymied when Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) refused to allow it to come to the floor before the elections.

Boehner’s stand may have cost Republicans at least one, if not two, Senate seats that the GOP had hoped to win in Great Plains states. And Roberts argued Tuesday that the leadership must take a second look now at the farm bill and its promised savings — a precious commodity given the fiscal pressures at the end of the year.

Congress's mindless obsession with targeting the wealthiest farmers with nearly limitless multimillion dollar investment/profit guarantees is one of the most disruptive financial forces to ever hit rural America. Smaller farmers given miniscle government benefits are stamped irrelevant by insane government insurance programs that destroy their ability to compete in any way with the umbrella of overwhelming superior investment/profit guarantees larded on the largest operations and are being rapidly driven from rural America. If smaller farmers are to have any chance of competing in America, government must be stopped from this mindless obsession of awarding the richest with the largest income/investment guaranteeing programs